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[Interview] Joseph Stiglitz On The ‘excessive Zeal Of Central Banks’ To Combat Inflation

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This week, the top European legislators will meet in Brussels at the Beyond Growth Conference, where they’ll try to imagine a world that isn’t solely devoted to economic growth.

This may be a challenge for some. Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission President, launched the EU Green Deal in 2019. She officially dubbed this Europe’s “new growth strategy.” This was criticized by some of the panellists this week. Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist, has said that green growth is a “fairytale designed to lull people to sleep.”

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, who is also a panelist, takes a slightly differing position. He agrees that governments shouldn’t pursue GDP growth just for its own sake, but argues that we don’t have to stop growth completely. This, he says, is “politically unacceptable.” Climate action will not make you poorer, and it could even “unleash” growth.

EUobserver sat with Stiglitz and discussed his recent work on sustainable development and how to design a economy that is conducive for rapid decarbonisation.

In a paper that you co-wrote, with Professor Nicholas Stern, you argue “at least for the next two or three decades”, it is not necessary to make a choice between the green transformation and the potential of growth. I can think a few Berlaymont residents who will be relieved by this news. Could you explain what you think about this?

Joseph Stiglitz: Nick and I both agreed that there’s a good chance the green transition could result in a markedly lower cost of energy. If energy costs are lower, this will encourage growth.

Inefficient cities and houses are a problem. We waste a lot in many different ways. We will save money by going green and be more productive. As costs drop, we might even spend our leisure differently. Green and rapid innovations will have a positive impact on other areas of human wellbeing and will help prevent environmental destruction. We will also solve other market failures like the lack of credit, due to the necessity of the Green Revolution.

What do you mean when you say that the issue of credit access will be resolved? How do you see this developing?

By creating green bonds, and green community banks, which provide low-interest loans to people and developers to cover the cost of solar panels, insulate homes, and buy electric cars. In the US, we’re doing this with the Inflation Reduction Act [a €370bn in green subsidies and tax scheme]Just not at the scale required to ignite the green revolution that we need.

In their fight against inflation the central banks have increased borrowing costs in one of the fastest rates ever recorded in the history of central bank. This has reduced economic activity and credit availability at a time when clean technology investments are most needed. Is it the right thing?

Inflation is now primarily supply-side driven. Inflation can be combated by monetary policy. But if the goal is to reduce demand, it is not the right tool to use. It may even be counterproductive, because we need more investment in order to solve the shortages and constraints of the supply side. If you believe there is a labour shortage, then the best policy is to increase the number of workers, for example through childcare policies that would encourage women to join the workforce.

If energy is a problem, then we should expand green energy massively. You want to encourage the entry of clean energy companies, not make it more difficult for them to compete against established fossil fuel companies through increased borrowing costs.

Raising interest rates makes accessing capital and entering the market more difficult for new firms, particularly.

You claim that strong climate action can increase growth. EU politicians are now talking about budgets and spending. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has pushed for an unpopular increase in the pension age. Christian Lindner, the German finance minister, has been pushing to return strict budgetary rules across Europe. Are we entering a phase of austerity?

I wouldn’t say that spending cuts are austerity, but they will be painful to the average person. On the other hand, corporate shares are up a lot. We should tax windfall profits to either protect those who have been adversely affected or to bring down prices.

Cost of living is rising. We must also fight climate change. If there is a shared sacrifice, you can ask a great deal of people. You will destroy social cohesion if you ask for one group to sacrifice, while the other group is rewarded.

Macron’s argument, that we must make social cuts to pay for this, is not convincing. He’s having political problems because he seems to be breaking the social agreement. I am surprised that politicians are not more sensitive to this issue.

You mention profits. In recent months, central bankers began to acknowledge that historically large corporate profits were a major driver of inflation. But have been reluctant to discuss it. What do you think of it?

Oh, yeah. That’s a lot. The scarcity of fossils fuels led to windfall profits. The other aspect is supply bottlenecks caused by the pandemic. This allowed large firms to increase prices because of their market dominance.

Raising interest rates won’t solve the problem. Raising interest rates will actually worsen bottlenecks because it will encourage firms to focus more on short-term profit than expanding supply.

They see that corporate profits are increasing, but they do not have any market power in their portfolio. They lack the power to change anything, so they choose to accept the current state of affairs. The central bankers then say that every time wages rise, they will have to tighten up the labour market, causing more unemployment. This is clearly the wrong model.

Why do they continue to follow that script?

The real fault of central bankers lies in their excessive desire to keep inflation low. One thing that has bothered me is the fact that some central banks seem to believe that wages are what drives inflation. It’s obvious that this is not true.

Prices have risen faster in the past few years than nominal wages, so real wages are lower now than they were before the crisis. Since decades, the share of labour in the economy has been decreasing. Now it is dropping dramatically.

Profits have been made. The shareholders and corporations will be much wealthier. We must accept this. We should look to the future and institute a capital tax, a windfall-tax, or both in order to prevent this from happening again. This excessive zeal for squelching labour is not helping, is my concern.

How do profits and wages relate?

The stagnation in wages is the flip side of the increase of profits. If corporate markups are reduced, wages don’t necessarily translate into higher prices. We should demand that markups be reduced because they are unusually high.

The EU implemented a windfall-tax on fossil fuel companies in the last year. How would you rate its effectiveness?

It was simply insufficient. Too many exemptions were made to the windfall tax. Some traders who made windfall profits received exemptions. Some people bought gas contracts for low prices and then sold them for a high price, making a large profit.

I think they deserve some sort of reward for taking a risk. But no one could have predicted what happened in the war. Even if you added a 70 percent tax to these windfall profits, the people would still be very well off.

The cost of living is higher or people have to work a long time. This is another example of a breach of the social contract, because France. The reform of retirement age affects workers in blue-collar jobs who entered the workforce at a younger age. Wealthier workers enter the workforce later, and are less affected.

Profits for corporations are increasing as a result of these cuts. This arrangement seems to be unacceptable to many. I think that’s right.

Stiglitz will speak about economic policy that is future-fit on Wednesday (17th May) at 09:30am.

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Green Economy

What Is The Price Of Nature? Experts Say It’s Not A Good Idea

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Vandana Shiva, a physicist/ecologist who spoke at the European Parliament about the need to “put a price” on nature, walked off the stage in a moment which could have been interpreted as a polite act of rebellion.

After returning to the panel, she said: “I have dedicated the last 50 years of my career to the protection and preservation of biodiversity. It has always been an ongoing struggle against commodification.” “When the British came into India, they made all of India a commodity.”

The discussion on Tuesday (17th May) was part a three-day Beyond Growth Conference, which brought together academics, activists and top policymakers in order to discuss Europe’s green path. Shiva left the room after Marco Lambertini, the soft-spoken Special Envoy of World Wildlife Fund International (WWF), made some remarks.

For others, his words were not outrageous. His message that markets and private money will be needed to protect vast tracts and biodiversity is now mainstream. Since over a decade, EU commissioners have been championing it.

At the UN COP15 global biodiversity summit in December last year, 188 countries agreed to protect at minimum 30 percent of the world’s biodiversity-rich lands and lakes, coastal areas, and oceans.

‘Confuses our understanding on ecology’

The biodiversity offset markets are at the heart of the plan. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity framework (GBF) listed biodiversity offsets and credit as one way to “mobilise” at least $200bn in 2030 to “close the funding gap” for biodiversity strategies.

This vision encourages the monetary value of nature (putting an actual price on ecosystem “services”) and the possibility to offset nature’s destruction.

Lambertini stated, “We do not value nature economically enough.” “Now, only dead nature is valuable. A tree only becomes valuable after it is cut down. “A fish is only valuable after it is caught.” He added that valuing natural “assets”, such as fish, could help prevent ecological degradation by making it more profitable to protect them.

Clive Spash, an ecologist who is also an economist, said that putting a value on nature “confuses the whole concept of ecology.”

“Conservation is all about the integrity and sustainability of ecosystems.” It’s about protecting the whole system, not just the parts that people like.

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is a practice that goes hand in hand with the idea of treating nature like an asset class.

Carbon-offset markets, worth up to EUR2bn, are already in place. They are used by consumers to alleviate their flight shame, and by global corporations such as Shell, Disney, Netflix, or, according to a recent report by the Guardian, by the band Pearl Jam to compensate for pollution.

Specialised companies allow the trading of ‘carbon credit’. Each credit represents a certain quantity of carbon removed — by planting trees or by preventing deforestation.

Offsetting schemes are under increased scrutiny.

Recent research on Verra, which is the world’s leading carbon-standard, found that 90 percent of rainforest offset credits — sold to companies like those mentioned above — did not represent genuine carbon reductions, and should not have approved.

Verra denied the findings. However, the results were confirmed by two groups of researchers: one from Cambridge University, and investigative journalists working for the German weekly Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial a non-profit journalism organization.

Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, who has been researching carbon credit for 20 years in order to find a solution to make the system function, told The Guardian that the implications of this research were “huge”, and added that “these issues exist within almost every type of nature protection credits.”

Frederic Hache said on Tuesday that carbon offsets were a waste of time. But biodiversity offsetting has been actively promoted around the globe.

State of Play

Australia is launching a market for nature repair. In November, the UK will launch its biodiversity offset program.

The World Bank, Walmart and France have recently partnered to create a market for biodiversity certificates.

The EU Commission updated its taxonomy of sustainable investments in April to include biodiversity offset as a means for companies to achieve green labelling under the EU’s landmark scheme.

In a feedback document dated May 2023 from the Platform on Sustainable Finance (one of the expert groups advising the commission), one of the members of the group advising the commission has called on the EU remove offset markets for biodiversity.

Carbon Market Watch and other green NGOs have also called for an outright ban on offset markets. But the EU has not yet shown any signs of a change in course.

Virginijus Sinkevicius, the EU’s environment commissioner, said that “the EU would not be banning offsets of carbon” when he presented new legislation against greenwashing in March of this year.

He did admit that there was “a significant risk: carbon removal programs could lead to “overestimations” and “double counting.” Ecologists warn that these risks could be even greater if they were applied to the much more complex issue of biodiversity.

There are millions of species

Hache said that there are only six types of carbon, yet there are millions of species. “If you think that carbon offsetting is bad then simplifying the complex webs of interdependencies which is life will have infinitely worse environmental consequences.”

He said that the effectiveness of biodiversity offset — such as replacing a lost ecosystem by recreating another similar habitat — to compensate for losses has no scientific basis. “Replacing an airport in the south of Spain and recreating a flamingo’s habitat nearby rarely works because we are unable recreate all ecosystem functions which have been destroyed,” Hache said.

In a recent Swedish meta-study on 40 such offset projects, it was found that ecosystem losses “were not estimated.”

Offset markets “divert the attention away from the necessity for tighter environmental regulations” and for rich companies and countries to “curb destruction.” He agreed with Shiva and Spash that policymakers should focus their efforts on “tighter environmental regulation.”

“We do not have to price nature in order to have sound conservation policy,” he said.

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Green Economy

A Feminist Future Is Needed To Ensure A Credible Future That Goes Beyond Growth

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Economic success measures are inherently sexist, and they are also unsustainable. Climate injustice and gender discrimination are no longer acceptable.

Our message is clear, precisely as the 2023 Beyond Growth Conference prepares to build a policy shift toward a more sustainable, just and equitable Europe. Economic, social, and environmental sustainability, and justice, must be deeply feminist.

Women and nature’s value are excluded from national economies. The GDP is a misleading measure of a country’s wealth.

Since its creation against the backdrop of World War Two and the Great Depression, it is used so widely that its origins as a completely artificial construct to track wartime activity are often forgotten.

In the eyes and minds of its creators, neither caring nor volunteering nor communities were considered relevant for the score based metric of an economic system that devalues stereotypically women-related things and maintains a culture of inequality.

This is even more absurd when you consider that certain national GDP figures actually do include black market transactions such as drug sales and prostitution, illegal trade in natural resources or weapons.

This shows that conventional economic measures use human life and natural resource as a means to manipulate abstract numbers even if they promote inequality, war, and environmental degradation.

The two crises that have occurred in the last few years highlight the absurdity of our system. The Covid-19 epidemic and Russia’s invasion in Ukraine caused extraordinary suffering, but also sparked unprecedented waves of solidarity among European societies. The selfless efforts of volunteers, combined with decisions that went against the maximisation of profit principles by the market, have saved many lives and prevented many disaster scenarios.

The GDP numbers did not reflect this. They were a remnant of an alternative reality based on simplistic economic models. They showed how much more value could have been generated if we had turned a blind-eye to destruction.

Riane Eisler, a political scientist, says that the real wealth of nations goes beyond financial gains. It also includes contributions from people and our environment. Kate Raworth’s (Doughnut Economics), for example, is a pioneering economist whose work can guide us to meet human needs while staying within the limits of our planet.

Women’s invisible work

Women do the majority of unpaid work in the world. According to estimates, cooking, cleaning, gathering food, or caring for elderly and children may account for up to 60% of GDP.

Care-giving is often not recognised, and many women are forced to work part-time or in unpaid employment. Not to mention the human cost of caregiving: in all EU countries on average, about half of all care workers report emotional strains. 38 percent are exhausted after work or most of the time. And 30 percent say their work negatively impacts their health.

According to economist Jayati ghosh, in a FEPS/FES study, the misallocations of precarious carework — which are often the result of cultural norms, lack of public services, and not choice — are not only unfair, but also inefficient, considering the great potential they could have to contribute towards the economy, human well-being, and social development.

Gross National Happiness

We should be careful to avoid making the same mistakes again when we discuss in Europe’s Parliament how to move beyond growth. We cannot tolerate policies that do not support the essential work of caring for others. Beyond growth policies which are not feminist may add to the existing inequality if they don’t focus on quality, nature, education, and the underlying social economic and biodiversity that makes our world possible.

The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations include a goal to reduce gender imbalances of unpaid work. This goal specifically states that unpaid care work and domestic work should be recognised and valued through public services, policies on infrastructure and social protection and by promoting shared responsibility in the family and household. We are still far away from achieving this goal.

There are many alternative indicators that can guide us to success as a society. These include the Social Wealth Index and the Index for Sustainable Welfare.

The Genuine Progress Indicator is based on criteria such as education, health, leisure, and sustainability.

The Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) measures the collective happiness in a nation by examining nine domains: psychological wellbeing, material well-being, good governance (good governance), health, education (community vitality), cultural diversity (cultural diversity), balanced time use (balanced time use), ecological diversity.

The recent experience with the Covid-19 pandemic, and the economic effects of the war in Ukraine, triggered new policies – to a large extent led by progressive women – focusing on social and environment wellbeing, including greater investments in public healthcare, the reduction in air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, or biodiversity conservation.

They have joined the wellbeing economy coalition to advance their common ambitions. This is supported by an increasing number of academic researchers and civil society organizations, as well as concerned citizens.

We must seize this moment to make a paradigm shift, reorganize our societies, and restructure our economies. We must move away from a growth model based on GDP and towards a post-growth model that is people-centred and care-focused, and respects the environmental, recognising that human health and planet health are two sides the same coin.

Faced with rising uncertainty, we need resilient, multi-stakeholder coalitions to jointly construct our paths towards a sustainable, humane, and socially just – and therefore, inherently feminist – Europe.

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MEPs Urge Orban, To Act To Unlock EU Money

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MEPs in charge of controlling the spending of EU funds continue to be “greatly concerned” about how Hungary manages EU money. They have called on Prime Minister Viktor Orban to implement reforms that will unblock EU funds that are currently suspended.

Monika Hohlmeier, a German MEP of the centre-right party, told reporters in Budapest on Wednesday (17th May) that “our goal is not to stop money; our goal is to spend the money in Hungary.”

The delegation of the European Parliament’s budget control committee reviewed the progress of the implementation of 27 super milestones – the measures that the EU Commission has set forth for the Hungarian government to unfreeze Cohesion and Covid Recovery Funds.

Hohlmeier stated that Hungary should implement measures “as quickly and as soon as possible”.

Last December, the EU countries approved a plan to grant Hungary EUR5,8bn under the bloc’s Covid-19 Recovery Plan, on the condition that Budapest implement 27 reform targets. These included strengthening judicial independence, and putting new anti-corruption measures in place.

The EU also suspended EUR6.3bn of cohesion fund payments to Hungary due to concerns about rule-of-law, which the EU claimed put the budget of the bloc at risk.

The negotiations between the government of Hungary and the commission are ongoing, but without any breakthrough.

MEPs do not have a direct say in the unlocking of funds. The European Parliament has kept up political pressure on EU officials to ensure that Hungary adheres to EU rules regarding independent judiciary, and fights corruption before receiving EU funds.

“The picture that emerged” […] Lara Wolters, a Dutch left-wing MEP, said that the lack of information regarding financial oversight of government expenditures, as well as issues in control audits of public procurements and conflict of interests, is a major concern for us.

“Real structural change is the only way to bring about real change.” [changes]She added that the media in Hungary was hostile towards the committee.

Media close to the government asked the MEPs at the press conference if EU money was connected to Hungary’s rejection to perceived EU policies regarding migration, gender and Ukraine. They also asked if the MEPs supported the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and what they thought of corruption in Brussels.

Petri Sarvamaa, a centre-right MEP from Finland, said in Budapest: “We don’t invent this stuff.” He added: “Our only purpose is to make sure that the EU budget in any member state is not at risk. This is not about Hungary.

Hohlmeier also added that the committee traveled to Spain Italy and Bulgaria to monitor EU expenditure.

Daniel Freund, German Green MEP, however, said that despite his eighth visit to Hungary he found “unthinkable” things in any other EU country.

“A rule by decretal, a state emergency for eight years, now ongoing, 95 amendments to the budget [in 2022] “Armed inspections of a food pantry by the tax authority without the participation of the national Parliament,” Freund said.

“We want EU funding to go to Hungary to build schools, put solar panels on the roofs, have fast internet everywhere and to provide social assistance to Hungarians who are most vulnerable,” he said.

“But we do not want EU funds to be used to enrich the family members and friends of Mr Orban, by breaking EU rules regarding fight against corruption and prevention of conflict of interest,” Freund added.

Tibor Navracsics said on Wednesday that he believed the European Parliament delegation had not read all the background material sent to them in advance.

According to media reports, he also claimed that political biases had influenced many MEPs’ opinions and that as a result factual errors have been made in some cases.

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